


like real people do

by songandsilence



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Gen, Missing Moments, wish fulfillment tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songandsilence/pseuds/songandsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dreams start as soon as she escapes from prison. He doesn’t think much of it at first – she is the most wanted fugitive on earth at the moment, and at least 75% of his day is spent in conversation about her, whether it be her motive, her origins (Lunar, he has to remind himself), her plans. Her picture follows him everywhere. It is on every screen, every newscast. Just as Torin is his shadow, she is as well.</p>
<p>(Missing moments - mostly during 'Scarlet')</p>
            </blockquote>





	like real people do

_I will not ask where you came from_   
_I will not ask you and neither should you_   
_Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips_   
_We should just kiss like real people do  
_

'Like Real People Do' - Hozier

* * *

The dreams start as soon as she escapes from prison. He doesn’t think much of it at first – she is the most wanted fugitive on earth at the moment, and at least 75% of his day is spent in conversation about her, whether it be her motive, her origins (Lunar, he has to remind himself), her plans. Her picture follows him everywhere. It is on every screen, every newscast. Just as Torin is his shadow, she is as well.

Kai feels like he should have other things on his mind. He has just inherited an empire, after all. His father is dead. There is imminent threat of war. Proverbially speaking, there are bigger fish to fry.

But that doesn’t stop his subconscious, apparently.

It’s a stiflingly hot night, hot enough that not even the environmental controls on his suite can eradicate the humidity completely. He hasn’t slept much since the night of the ball, but Torin ordered him to sleep, so he’s trying. Trying and failing.

The covers are thrown away from him, his limbs splayed in every direction. He has left the windows un-shaded, open to the lights of the city below the palace. There are low clouds, reflecting golden and blue and red lights in soft, changing patterns. He stares at it and drifts off.

_There is a body on his. As he is sprawled on his back, someone is sprawled on top of him, hair tickling his throat. Without opening his eyes, he knows it is her._

_“It’s too hot,” she mumbles, her breath tickling his shoulder, his collarbones._

_A smile tugs at his mouth. They are both tired, eyes closed, half-asleep. “If it’s so hot,” he whispers, running his fingertips up her arm and settling on the back of her neck, “then maybe you could stop crushing me and find some space on this enormous bed.” His words are light, teasing, and she snorts._

_“Are you calling me fat, Emperor Kai?” She lifts her head, and he sees her face, the face that somehow became familiar in a heartbreakingly small number of days. “You will pay for that comment in a not-so-subtle way at a later date. Lucky for you I’m too tired to retaliate right now.”_

_The breath that leaves him is closer to a laugh than anything. Sleepily, lazily, she leans in and kisses him. It’s a careless, habitual thing, as though they’ve been doing it every day. He lifts his hand and cups the back of her head, feeling the cool metal of her leg against his._

_Cyborg._

_Lunar._

_Fugitive._

_"Cinder,” he murmurs, but it’s not enough. Frowning, he pulls back and looks at her._

The dream is already lost.

* * *

 

The next one comes after a particularly bad argument with Torin and a stressful day with Levana. He is ready to burst with fury, and even working to find Princess Selene isn’t helping him. It’s too much. The weight on his shoulders is too much. He isn’t strong enough to carry it.

Choking back furious, frustrated, defeated tears, he scrubs at his face and paces his father’s office. What would his father have done? Had his father been glad, when he received his diagnosis, that he wouldn’t have to bear this weight any longer? Kai banishes the thought almost as soon as he thinks it and falls into a large leather armchair with a thunk. It’s still too formal in here to be truly comfortable, but he likes it anyway. It makes him feel like he’s not alone in this, even if he really is.

Tipping his head back against the chair, he closes his eyes for a moment and wonders about his father. It’s a constant mantra in his head: what would his father have done? Probably something immeasurably clever and politic, fixing all their problems in one fell swoop while still maintaining all their important alliances.

“Come on, Kai,” he mutters to himself, “be realistic.” Not even his father had been that good. But he had kept Levana at bay for over a decade. Although, now that he knows her, he thinks that she was only kept at bay because she wanted to be.

Kai sighs. The immense pressure to think creatively about these challenges was, predictably, completely crushing his creativity. He just has Torin that he trusts, truly, and Nainsi. Everyone else is suspect, or at the very least, vulnerable to Lunar compulsion. With Levana in the palace, everything and everyone is too dangerous. And, Emperor Rikan had had Kai’s mother.

With a tug in his gut, Kai tries to remember his mother. He had still been a child when she had died, taken from him by the same disease that took his father. Had she advised his father? Had they talked through the challenges that faced the Commonwealth together? He isn’t the only child to lose both parents, and he had been an adult when his father had passed. That, and he had a palace and a staff of thousands to take care of him. But it still seemed achingly unfair that he was parentless. The loneliness of it stings.

Still struggling with his thoughts, Kai falls into an exhausted sleep.

_“Kai, are you asleep?” she asks, sounding astonished. Kai’s head snaps up, eyes open, and finds Cinder standing in front of the chair he’s seated in with an amused smile on her face._

_It is a bright, sunny day and the overly-formal room is drenched in golden light. She is incongruously dressed in the outfit he first saw her in, a tank top and baggy cargo pants, covered in grease, hair in a messy ponytail. The smile on her face is small, private. “What will the council say?” she teases, reaching out to smooth the hair back from his forehead. He closes his eyes briefly at her touch. “Univ for your thoughts?”_

_Opening his eyes again, he takes her hand and tugs her closer, so she sits on the arm of the chair and he loops an arm around her waist, fingers curving around her side. “It doesn’t matter. Everything’s better now that you’re here.”_

_She hums happily at the comment and presses a kiss to his forehead, cupping his face. He leans into the touch of her cyborg hand. “You will get through this, Kai.” The quiet conviction in her voice stills him. “You’re smart, you’re resourceful.” Tipping his head back, she presses her lips to his. It’s a simple kiss, light and reassuring, and it settles deep in his ribcage._

An insistent beep from his portscreen wakes him. Cursing tiredly, Kai rises from the chair to see what fresh hell has broken loose.

* * *

 

-“So, this Carswell Thorne…” Kai mutters, leaning both hands on his desk and staring at the screen in front of him. “Why is he teaming up with her, exactly? What’s his motive?”

Torin is frowning stonily, studying a portscreen of his own. “I don’t believe he has any motive in regards to Linh Cinder, your Highness,” he says, running a hand over his face. The wear is starting to get to him, even. “The video footage showing her entering his cell would seem to suggest that she needed a cell near an exit of some sort, and he happened to be in his at the time. I believe it was a matter of chance.”

Kai lets out a quiet breath, annoyance simmering just beneath the surface of his skin. The winking prison photo was really what was doing him in. Just imagining that man and Cinder on a ship together –

“Your Highness, while I think that it bears thinking about what resources Thorne may be able to give Linh Cinder, I do not believe he is otherwise worth thinking about.” There is a strange undertone to Torin’s voice. Was the older man on to Kai? Kai quickly wipes his features blank and nodded, listening as they moved on to the next subject of discussion.

That night, it took him a long time to sleep. After tossing and turning angrily, he fell into a fitful sleep.

_He pins her against the wall. She lets out a little breathy noise that is immediately stifled by his mouth on hers. It is dark and they are frantic, rushed and furious. Her hands latch onto his hair, pulling gently. He groans into her mouth._

_There is hair tickling his cheeks and her nose is pressing into his cheek, her tongue running along the inside of his lips. His hands can’t settle on one place – sliding from her cheeks to her waist, palm wide on the flat plane of her stomach, clutching at the voluminous fabric of her dress. She is wearing the silver dress from the ball, but it’s too dark to see if it is still wrinkled and dirty._

_“Kai,” she says on an inhale, mouth ripping from his as her head falls back. He immediately runs his mouth along her jaw, down her neck, tracing her collarbones, her sternum. The fabric of the dress is really starting to be a problem._

_“This is too much clothing,” he grouses, hands seeking skin underneath her skirt while pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses to her neck. Then he kneels, intent on finding a way past the ridiculous amount of fabric._

_She laughs. “You could, I don’t know, take it off –_ oh _.” Her words falter as his mouth touches her leg. Kai grins against her skin, running his tongue along the curve of her knee, cupping the back of her calf. She sucks in a breath and releases it, shuddering._

_Pushing her skirts out of the way, he switches to the other leg and kisses where metal meets skin, making her shake in earnest. The heat of it, the intensity of it, is making him shudder. He wants her so badly he falters and looks up at her, uncertain she’s even real. Noticing his pause, she looks down and curls her fingers into his hair. “What is it?”_

_“Nothing,” he replies, voice hoarse. He doesn’t say that some part of him, some part he wasn’t quite aware of, wants to make her his. His alone. _

_Then he is dragging his mouth up her leg again, scraping his teeth lightly against her skin to make her gasp. By the time he slowly inches his way up and makes it to the juncture between her legs, she is murmuring a steady stream of curses, one hand gripping his hair tightly, the other fisting his shirt. With a slow lick he undoes her, with a hot breath and the light touch of teeth he makes her quake. He loves it. As his tongue curls into her lips, his hand finds her clit and rubs, making her hips jerk against his mouth. A more colorful curse leaps from her and he can’t help but smile, though still concentrating on the task at hand._

_When she comes it is with a cry muffled against her fist, his hands on her hips, supporting. Every inch of him is warm and wanting from tasting her, from feeling her, from watching her._

_Suddenly they are in another room, and Cinder is seated on a table with her legs on either side of Kai’s hips. It is pitch black and he can barely see her, but every tiny sound of theirs is like thunder in his ears._

_Then they are in his bed, spread out on the sheets as moonlight spills through the windows. She is naked and so is he and they move together fluidly, furiously. His palm spreads on her thigh, pulling her leg up and feeling metal on his hip. Beneath him, her eyes are dark and bottomless, intensely focused on him. “Stars, Kai,” she whispers, and their mouths are millimeters apart. “Kai.”_

The groan that rips out of his mouth is agonized when he wakes, alone in his room. Rubbing both hands over his face, he lays there in frustration and wonders if she even thinks of him at all. If she dreams of him too.

* * *

 

“Cinder? Hellooooo.”

Cinder wakes with a gasp, jerking in the seat next to the pilot’s seat. It takes her a moment to remember where she is. Right. The Rampion. That’s space spread out ahead of her, Earth a blue and green shimmering sphere below. Leaning back, she lets out a truly impressive string of curses, rubbing her hands over her face.

Thorne snorts lightly. “Must have been a damn good dream. You want some time alone, Miss Linh?”

She glares at him. “None of your business.”

A voice pipes up from above them, around them. “Was it about Kai?” Iko asks cheekily, the temperature in the cockpit rising just slightly.

“Stars above,” Cinder breathes. “Can you all stop bothering me? How do you even know I was dreaming anyway? I just dozed off.”

If Thorne were capable of making a conspiratorial glance with a space ship, that’s what he was doing at the moment. “You, uh…you were making some noises.”

“Shut up,” Cinder snaps, thankful for her inability to blush. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Uh, who was awake and forced to listen to you while you were off in happy dreamland with an emperor?” Thorne asks, raising his hand. “This guy.”

“And me,” chimes Iko. Cinder hunches in her seat, crossing her arms over her stomach. “Just shut up, both of you.” After another little chuckle, Thorne goes back to chatting with Iko about their course and the android body he hopes to find for her, and Cinder stares out towards Earth. The African Union is below them at the moment, and the Western Commonwealth, but if she strains she can start to make out some of the nations in the Commonwealth closer to New Beijing. Where Kai is.

Sighing, she rubs her eyes and tries to forget. They are just dreams, after all.


End file.
